There are, admittedly, more obvious places in which to go looking for William the Conqueror. Bayeux would be one. The British Museum, currently showing the original embroidery on its historic loan from France, would be another, assuming one is prepared to participate in what one visitor recently described as “Glastonbury for the over-60s”. Or, there is Reading. Three or four minutes on foot from The Roseate Reading, inside the gloriously municipal Reading Museum, is Britain’s full-size Victorian Bayeux Tapestry: roughly 70 metres of the surviving story, recreated at full scale. No scrum around Harold’s eye; no stranger’s shoulder advancing inexorably into your field of vision just as William lands at Pevensey. Admission, magnificently, is free.
A Victorian recreation with its own history
The copy exists because Elizabeth Wardle, an accomplished embroiderer from Leek, decided England should have a Bayeux Tapestry of its own. After seeing the original in 1885, she recruited 35 women from across Britain to recreate all 70 metres of it, using her own study and hand-coloured photographs from what is now the V&A. Her husband, Thomas, a silk dyer and friend of William Morris, supplied the yarns; each embroiderer stitched her name beneath her section. Stand close and one charming truth emerges: some were considerably better at it than others.
Finished in just over a year, it toured Britain, Germany and America before reaching Reading in 1895, where former mayor Arthur Hill bought it for the town. This was more historically apposite than it sounds. William the Conqueror’s youngest son, Henry I, founded Reading Abbey in 1121, then was buried there in 1136. On our cool, windy walk from the hotel’s red carpet towards the museum, we passed straight through its ruins, enormous enough to make Reading suddenly feel less like somewhere reached by a fast train from Paddington and instead a place sitting rather squarely on top of English history.
Close encounters and Victorian censorship
The tapestry rewards slowness. I particularly liked the banquets: convivial, happy, a rare interval in which nobody appears to be invading, betraying or dismembering anyone, before the omens, mobilisation and assorted medieval decapitation resume. There is Victorian censorship too. One naked fellow in the border acquires pants in Reading. For years the women of Leek were blamed for the prudery, unfairly; male staff at the South Kensington Museum had already added the underwear to the photographs they copied. The embroiderers were merely being accurate.
After a guided tour finished, people flocked in, forgive the pun, and queued at the beginning. Yet the embroidery is displayed in two long sections, so starting halfway produced an entirely different experience. At one point I stood virtually alone before the famous image of Harold apparently taking an arrow through the eye. The original ending is lost. On a separate wall Reading offers an imagined final panel, with William enthroned: an answer to a medieval cliffhanger. And the Victorian copy is now nearly 140 years old itself, with its own journeys, repairs, scholarship and conjecture. It has acquired a history of its own.
Shire Hall after dark
The Roseate has civic history baked into it. Its Grade II-listed main building was constructed between 1904 and 1911 as Berkshire’s Shire Hall in emphatic Queen Anne mode: red brick, Portland stone, Doric columns and a groin-vaulted entrance hall. Berkshire County Council stayed until 1981. The building has strong bones. Purbeck marble, vaulted ceilings, and the original lift shaft survive, although into that shaft someone has suspended an Italian chandelier containing 86,000 beads. The old council chamber survives too, now the Eden room. Reading Crown Court sits next door. One former manager joked that boring through the wall would effectively put him in court, a hazard which may concentrate the mind when settling a hotel bill.
The former Berkshire Shire Hall has loosened up considerably since 1911. Alain Bonnefoit’s reclining nude now watches over the bed, prompting Lyra to stand on the mattress for a closer inspection. The hotel belongs to Bird Group, whose interests follow an unusually broad flight path, from luxury hotels to ice skating. Not all bedrooms occupy the old Shire Hall either. The “House” sits across the car park in a former serviced-apartment block, creating an online schism between those who prefer history and those who prefer newer rooms and air conditioning. One TripAdvisor pilgrim compared moving from old to new to walking through first class before sitting in business.
Reading, unexpectedly, eats well
Its restaurant provided the other surprise. The Reading Room sits at the more upholstered end of the town’s ambitions, overseen by executive chef Rajesh Maharjan. On our visit, however, head chef Pridep Thapa seemed almost as present at our table as in his kitchen: precise, detailed, warm, returning to explain starter and main before pastry chef Vishnu Santhosh appeared for the pre-dessert and pudding. We sat at the chef’s table among books on ingredients, fashion, art, Burgundy, and even books on books. The first indication that dinner might be rather better than expected arrived as an amuse-bouche of local beetroot prepared four ways.
Thapa’s explanation of the scallop was telling. The kitchen checks the following day’s bookings before ordering, so Orkney scallops arrive in shell specifically for that service rather than being held in stock. Ours was perfectly cooked, with pearl vegetables, golden caviar and Champagne foam. South Coast crab came with more caviar, melon, nashi pear and chervil juice, the melon a particularly good touch. “The Forest”, a chestnut mushroom velouté with truffle foam and artichoke crisp, was satisfyingly old school. Best of all was Dorset spring lamb with pressed potato, grilled cauliflower and tomato-and-fenugreek sauce, the meat marinated overnight with Indian spices while the potato terrine remained resolutely French. Santhosh followed with an excellent strawberry and lemon pre-dessert, finished with olive oil and dried olive, then Jivara chocolate, hazelnut, salted caramel and brown-butter ice cream.
The British Museum has the eleventh-century masterpiece until July 2027, although photography is restricted to keep visitors moving. Reading has a 140-year-old Victorian version you can examine at your own pace, a Norman abbey founded by the Conqueror’s son on the way there, a handsome former Shire Hall to sleep in afterwards, and a restaurant considerably more serious than I expected. For once, Reading may be the insider’s choice. Room rates from £104; The Roseate Reading, 26 The Forbury, Reading, Berkshire, RG1 3EJ.
